Shadow Hunters is a survival board game set in a devil-filled forest in which three groups of characters – the Shadows, creatures of the night; the Hunters, humans who try to destroy supernatural creatures; and the Neutrals, civilians caught in the middle of this ancient battle – struggle against each other to survive.

You belong to one of these groups and must conceal your identity from others since you dont know who you can trust – at least not initially. Over time, though, someone might decipher who you are through your actions or through Hermit cards, or you might even reveal yourself to use your special ability.

The key to victory is to identify your allies and enemies early because once your identity is revealed, your enemies will attack without impunity using their special abilities like Demolish, Teleport, and Suck Blood or equipment cards such as the Rusty Broad Ax or Fortune Brooch. This ancient battle comes to a head and only one group will stand victorious – or a civilian, in the right circumstances, might claim victory.

The 2011 edition of Shadow Hunters from Z-Man Games includes the Shadow Hunters Expansion Kit, a set of ten new characters previously sold separately.

In an abandoned warehouse a gangster band is splitting its loot, but they can’t get an agreement on the split! It’s time to let the guns talk and soon everyone is aiming at everyone. The richest surviving gangster wins the game!

Ca$h n Gun$ will make you relive the best scenes of your favorite gangster movies. Fun, bluffing, and tough negotiations are guaranteed, but will you dare to play? Its simply killing!

On each turn, a player will assume the role of The Don, and will call out the steps in gameplay.

Before the skirmish itself, an available pot of cash will be laid out before the players. This pot must be evenly split up amongst all of the surviving hoods.

After that, the Don of the round will ask the players, including himself, to load their guns (in the form of selecting one of three possible cards: Bang!, Bang! Bang! Bang! or Click! Click! from a set of 8 cards: 2 Bang!s, 1 Triple-Bang! and 5 Clicks!), and then count down to all of the players aiming their guns (real foam guns).

Each player will take a look at how many guns are pointed at them, and also take a look at the available pot of cash for the round before deciding if they want to Chicken Out and remove themselves from the skirmish. If they choose to back down, they will get a Chicken token which will deduct from their ill-gotten gains at the end of the game.
But all players have to Chicken Out at the same time, using a countdown like the aiming.

The remaining players will resolve the shootout showing their cards. First all Triple-Bangs! wound the players there are aimed at. If now still aiming players with Bang! cards are aiming, those wound their targets. Click!s are only bluffs and do nothing. If you are wounded during the standoff you will not participate on the split of the cash. Even more, he receives a bandage (if you reach a certain number of bandages you will go out of the game). Now all the used cards are discarded - even those of the players that Chickened Out.

Now the remaining players will finally split the cash. If the cash cannot be divided evenly, the rest is kept on the table and is added to the new pot.

The game is played 8 rounds, until all cards were played. Keeping track of the cards is important, since all players have only a limited supply of real shots.

There are a couple of expansions packed-in with most editions that change some of the mechanics of the game, and also add a new traitor-based mechanic, as well.

(9) This game is fun, but hope to try using the ability cards next time. Anyone has any other opinions?2014-03-16 - Kaden

HIDE YOUR IDENTITY OR FIND THE SPIES

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by MafiaWerewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himselfherself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

The Resistance: Avalon pits the forces of Good and Evil in a battle to control the future of civilization. Arthur represents the future of Britain, a promise of prosperity and honor, yet hidden among his brave warriors are Mordreds unscrupulous minions. These forces of evil are few in number but have knowledge of each other and remain hidden from all but one of Arthurs servants. Merlin alone knows the agents of evil, but he must speak of this only in riddles. If his true identity is discovered, all will be lost.

The Resistance: Avalon is a standalone game, and while The Resistance is not required to play, the games are compatible and can be combined.

Werewolves of Millers Hollow is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role - Werewolf, Ordinary Townsfolk, or special character such as The Sheriff, The Hunter, the Witch, the Little Girl, The Fortune Teller and so on... There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers (normal and special villagers alike) then deliberate and vote on a player they suspect is a Werewolf, helped (or hindered) by the clues the special characters add to the general deliberation. The chosen player is lynched, reveals hisher role and is out of the game. Werewolf is a social game that requires no equipment to play, and can accommodate almost any large group of players.

Covert Action, which handles 4-18 players, is aimed squarely at the Werewolf crowd. Players are part of a covert team (red, blue, green) that must eliminate one member of an opposing team, but your target is a mystery. At the start of the round, players are randomly dealt a card that depicts one of four characters: sniper, agent, cleaner, mole. The sniper of one team must shoot the sniper of another team to win that round. Problem is, you have to figure out who to shoot without being shot yourself.

As for the other characters, the mole is secretly working for one of the other teams, the agent makes the other team lose if he is shot, and the cleaner must make the shot if the sniper isn’t a part of the team. (Two cards are randomly thrown out each round, so a team’s sniper might be out of play. The cleaner needs to figure this out by talking with his teammates, but since all discussion is open, they still need to be covert in their talk.) Members of the winning team (or teams, when three teams are in play) receive a score card, and the first player (or players) to receive four cards wins the game. Teams are randomly determined each round, so your back-up man one round may be your target the next. Covert Action sounds utterly simple, yet is difficult to describe succinctly. I look forward to seeing how Frank makes everything clear in the rules.

You know how to draw? Good, then PIX is a game for you as it offers a new challenge: drawing with pixels!

You dont know how to draw? Good, then PIX is a game for you as youll draw just as well as anyone with pixels!

Thats the publishers come-on for the party game PIX, in which your drawing skills will be put to the test. During set-up, youll receive a magnetic board, twenty black square pixels and one red pixel; one or two other players will have the same color magnetic board as you. On a round, the players holding one color of boards will be challenged to create a pixellated image of a secret word.

Once the drawing time has run out, each player will reveal her artwork in the hopes that someone will guess what the image is. Both the correct guesser and the player who created that image score points – but heres the catch: Drawings are revealed according to the number of pixels used, so the fewer pixels you use, the more likely you are to show your image first, but the less likely other players are to guess what it is. Well, maybe – perhaps youre an 8-bit wizard and others will decipher your creations instantly...

Ca$h n Gun$: Live is a sequel to Ca$h n Gun$, not an extension - although it does come with a bonus special power to extend its predecessor.

8 to 20 players play in a public place where non-players are present. When the referee blows the whistle, all players points their hands (as if they had a gun) towards another player...all this in a public place!

Of course, players are gangsters sharing a lot of money.

Though ostensibly a LARP game, and on the cusp of being outside the scope of BGG, it retains inclusion as a group activity not dissimilar from Werewolf.

The unusual and asymmetric game Ladies & Gentlemen brings players into the world of glamour. In teams of two – one playing a man, the other a woman – the players try to pull together the best-looking and most famous couple who will attend the big ball. The gentlemans duty is to make as much money as possible, which the lady will then spend on jewelry, clothes, and exclusive accessories. Each team has its own action cards to carry out its tasks, and the more that the players embody their characters – flirtatious, fashion-obsessed ladies, and rich, arrogant, pretentious gentlemen – the more fun and explosive the game will be!

Good Cop Bad Cop is a 52 card hidden identity, deduction game where each player takes on the role of a law enforcement officer in a corrupt district. Players must investigate others to figure out who is on their side, grab one of the 2-3 guns on the table, and shoot the opposing leader to win the game.

The king is holding a great banquet for all the nobles in the realm so that they can bathe in his splendour. Artists and troubadours will bring the necessary entertainment. It is meant to be a feast that will long be remembered!

The guests attending the feast hall feel the same, for in the corners of the castle deadly plots are being developed. The guests are divided into two factions, with both planning to dismiss the king. One faction plans to smuggle a dagger into the feast hall to open the kings heart to the realm at the right time, while the other faction hopes to give the king renewed motivation with a poisoned drink.

In The Last Banquet, each player is a guest at the feast and needs to help his faction reach its goal and ensure that this will truly be the kings last banquet. The game includes 25 role cards, each portraying a person on the front and listing that persons skills on the back. In addition to The Last Banquet, several other scenarios are provided in the rules that can be played with each of the roles. (GameHeads Oliver Wolf notes, Playing time ranges from 30 minutes up to 90 minutes or more, with more people tending to need more time to play. Also, some scenarios involve more than two factions.) Obstacle cards provide challenges for players to overcome.

When a faction succeeds in its goal, all players who belong to that faction win the game.

Legends of the Three Kingdoms (a.k.a. San Guo Sha) is a card game based off the Chinese classical novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and shares many rules with BANG!. The differences are as follows:
1. The Monarch (Sheriff) may get an additional skill related to their kingdom allegiance; players routinely have two powers.
2. Weapons may have their own additional powers.
3. A card to let a player borrow a weapon from another.
4. A card to cancel the effect of other cards.
5. Peach (Beer) may be played by any player when someone loses their last life; there is no exemption of using Peach when there are only 2 players left.
6. The game proceeds counter-clockwise.
7. Reincarnation*: The Dead may return to the game (start with 1 life) when he gets 3 or 4 cards from other players (a player may only give 1 card to the Dead within his round); the risen Dead are not counted to the winning condition.

In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players – neighbors at the table – choose a word or phrase that the other players need to guess. Acting together, this team places pieces judiciously on the available icons on the game board.

To get others to guess milk, for example, the team might place the question mark icon (which signifies the main concept) on the liquid icon, then cubes of this color on the icons for fooddrink and white. For a more complicated concept, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, the team can use the main concept and its matching cubes to clue players into the hidden phrase being an actor or director, while then using sub-concept icons and their matching cubes to gives clues to particular movies in which DiCaprio starred, such as Titanic or Inception.

The first player to discover the word or phrase receives 2 victory points, the team receives points as well, and the player who ends up with the most points wins.

The old fashioned sand timer may limit the amount of time they get to execute their sketch, but it certainly doesnt limit creativity! Times up! All players, all at the same time, pass their sketch to the next player, who must guess whats been drawn. Players then simultaneously pass their guess -- which hopefully matches the original word (or does it??) -- to the next player who must try to draw the word they see -- and so on.

Act Too, a.k.a. Mimtoo, is a simple game of miming and gestures that is played in teams. One player on the active team draws both a character card and an action card, then silently acts out the card combination – for example, an electrician dancing the polka. This players teammates have one minute to guess the answer, collecting a card if they do so. The team that collects the most cards wins!

(8) excellent game is playing with people who are not very serious2016-01-28 - kaden

LYING, BETRAYAL, DECEPTION, LOYALTY, HIDDEN ROLES, SPIES, THIEVES...

In Mafia de Cuba, each player will take the cigar box, open it and choose to:

Betray and steal some diamonds,
Remain a faithful and honest mafioso, be a driver, or act as an undercover CIA agent.

In the evening, the Godfather recovers his cigar box. He blows a fuse when he finds the disappearance of diamonds. He must find his treasure and punish offenders by providing them cement shoes before throwing them in the bay. After heated debates and perilous deductions, The Godfather, with the help of is faithful henchmen will try to find all his stolen diamonds.

Dead Last — originally known as Tontine — is a social collusion game of shifting alliances, betrayals, and murder for profit in which players must conspire and vote upon whom to kill each round. Any means of overt or covert communication is allowed — a glance, a nod, pointing under the table, flashing a card, anything – but make sure you dont tip off the target or they could ambush you instead! In the end, one or two players will remain, either claiming all the gold or squaring off in a final showdown before starting the next round of play. The first player to score 24 points of gold wins.

SmileyFace is a card game of face-to-face family fun for four to eight players.

Over the seven short rounds of the game, each player tries to collect the highest total face value of cards of a single type. Each round brings new surprises as the values of cards change and the wacky Mischief cards come into play. Only the player with the highest score for a round (and perhaps the player who lent him a helping hand) will win points!

A Kings Life: Intriguingly the designer reports that originally the game had a very different theme, being called A Kings Life and concerned with a royal court and its attempts to cheer up a bored king. The retheme was recommended by the publisher.

AssassinCon uses an interesting hidden movement mechanism to capture the atmosphere of an event in which anybody could be out to get you. A player knows who their assassin is in real life, but not who they are playing in the game. They move around by secretly playing movement cards that are all shuffled together before being read and played.

The goal is to catch your target while evading your assassin. Points are scored for successfully assassinating a player, identifying your would-be killer, or scaring players into making mistakes as a ghost from beyond the grave, so even dead players are still in on the action!

The party game Apples to Apples consists of two decks of cards: Things and Descriptions. Each round, the active player draws a Description card (which features an adjective like Hairy or Smarmy) from the deck, then the other players each secretly choose the Thing card in hand that best matches that description and plays it face-down on the table. The active player then reveals these cards and chooses the Thing card that, in his opinion, best matches the Description card, which he awards to whoever played that Thing card. This player becomes the new active player for the next round.

Once a player has won a pre-determined number of Description cards, that player wins.

Compatibility

Play is in teams of two. Each person has a deck of picture cards. Each deck has the same set of pictures. There is also a deck of word cards with words like marriage, de facto, and pimple.

A word is chosen and each player chooses 2-5 cards from hisher deck. Teams score points for choosing the same pictures, and score extra points for putting the pictures in the same order (from most to least important).

The board is used to keep track of the score, and to dictate how many pictures a team may select. First team to the end wins.

Each player begins by sketching a TELESTRATIONS word dictated by the roll of a die. The old fashioned sand timer may limit the amount of time they get to execute their sketch, but it certainly doesnt limit creativity! Times up! All players, all at the same time, pass their sketch to the next player, who must guess whats been drawn. Players then simultaneously pass their guess -- which hopefully matches the original word (or does it??) -- to the next player who must try to draw the word they see -- and so on.

Telestrations contains eight erasable sketchbooks and markers, a die, a 90 second sand-timer and 2,400 words to choose from.

Not a trivia buff? It doesnt matter! In Wits & Wagers, each player writes a guess to a question such as “In what year did the bikini swimsuit makes its first appearance?” or “How many feet wide is an NFL football field?” and places it face-up on the betting mat. Think you know the answer? Bet on your guess. Think you know who the experts are? Bet on their guess. The closest answer--without going over--pays out according to the odds on the betting mat. Strike it big and you’ll be cheering like you just hit the jackpot!

Wits & Wagers is a trivia game that lets you bet on anyone’s answer. So you can win by making educated guesses, by playing the odds, or by knowing the interests of your friends. It can be taught in 2 minutes, played in 25 minutes, and accommodates up to 20 people in teams.